There are times, more than I鈥檇 care to admit, an hour and a half into a trainer ride in my freezing garage, staring at my bike avatar move through virtual landscapes of Zwift, when my gear is growing moss and the walls are closing in the way do at Disney鈥檚 Haunted Mansion ride, that I suddenly feel the urge to shed the cloying comforts of home and go for some long trek through a foreign landscape.

If only, I鈥檝e often thought, I had an 国产吃瓜黑料 Buddy鈥攕omeone who would always be there, nodding along as I detailed my latest hazily conceptualized scheme: I just read about the most remote pub in the UK. They鈥檒l buy you a beer if you hike in. It takes a few days. You up for it? To complicate things, my mind never seems to drift to the local, the achievable (say, a day-hike in the Poconos) for which I might actually drum up a companion. I generate quixotic ideas that call for veritable Sancho Panzas.

The trusty companion of trail and tent is an idea鈥攁lmost a romantic longing鈥攖hat haunts the world of outdoor exploits. You think of famous climbing partnerships like Conrad Anker and Jimmy Chin, or Tommy Caldwell and Alex Honnold. If you鈥檙e me, you think of writers like William Finnegan, in his surfing memoir Barbarian Days, cavorting around the globe with his buddy Bryan Di Salvatore. Finnegan once evinced the bromance aspect of the whole thing. 鈥淵ou go to extreme lengths, and you do it together, so these friendships really get tested,鈥� he told Alta Journal. 鈥淵ou want that great wave, but it鈥檚 much greater if your friend sees you get that great wave. It鈥檚 a dense sort of homoerotic world you live in.鈥� The same, of course, can be true of female adventure friendships.

I鈥檓 not alone in my hunger for shared adventure. You see it on the partner boards at shops like Denver鈥檚 Wilderness Exchange, where people put up cards listing their preferred pursuit and available dates (鈥淎lways,鈥� being my favorite). You see it in endless online queries from people new to a town who don鈥檛 have anyone to join them in the outdoors. The URL will take you to a site, based in Alaska, looking to pair people up. 鈥淲hat a great idea!鈥� one commenter wrote. 鈥淛ust what Alaska needs … So many things to do, but not always easy to find the people to go with.鈥�

Indeed.

As it turns out, I actually do have an ideal adventure buddy in mind: my friend Wayne Chambliss. Wayne鈥攃urrently doing post-graduate work in London on geography, part of which involves him being 鈥渋nhumed,鈥� or buried underground鈥攊s pretty much up for anything, no matter how grueling, how ill-advised, how quasi-legal. He鈥檚 got an outdoor CV that is impressively outlandish.

All this raises a question: What, in fact, makes for a good adventure buddy?

There was the time near Utqiagvik, Alaska, that he had to outsprint a polar bear鈥攖his just after he鈥檇 taken bolt cutters to his wedding ring, chucking half of it, in some Tolkienesque rite, onto the frozen Beaufort Sea. Or the time, for lack of planning, he was forced to do a fifty-one-mile single-push circumambulation of Oregon鈥檚 Three Sisters volcanic peaks. He鈥檚 been submerged in a homemade submarine, along with its maker, off the coast of Honduras; he鈥檚 been airlifted into the wilds of Canada for a kayaking trip, without much knowing how to kayak. He鈥檚 crossed the Grand Canyon from rim to rim to rim, walked through Chernobyl鈥檚 zone of exclusion, and traversed Death Valley on foot (twice). Wayne is also a ferocious magpie of information, an endless spinner of theories and weaver of connections, a writer of feverish, private dispatches. Once, when I was asked him for any off-the-cuff thoughts for a potential story on treasure, he responded immediately:

鈥淗ey, Tom. An interesting question. I鈥檒l give it some thought. In the meantime, are you considering botanical rarities like ghost orchids or Pennantia baylisiana, or last surviving speakers of languages, or the gold that Rumi帽ahui ordered hidden in the Llanganates Mountains, or the Nazi gold hidden in Lower Silesia, or the one viable REE mine in the U.S. (now owned by a Chinese concern), or how antimatter (of which less than twenty nanograms have been produced thus far, I believe) costs ~$62.5 trillion per gram, or the lone copy of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin (which would be a great opportunity to interview the Wu-Tang Clan, and maybe Bill Murray), the disassembly of the Codex Leicester鈥︹��

I will cut it off there. But it went on. And it was the first of three emails. Suffice it to say, we could spend weeks on an outing without running out of things to talk about. There is just one problem in all of this: Wayne and I have never actually done any adventures together. Our failure to connect can be explained away by that tangled alchemy of time pressure, work commitments, having a family, and the general financial state of the creative precariat. Call it real life.

The closest we got was when I randomly discovered we were both in Quito, Ecuador, at the same time. I was working on a magazine piece about a spate of new luxury high-rises built by big-name architects. He was , the active volcano that shimmers distantly over the city. Flopping on my bed at night after another lavish, wine-heavy dinner, I felt a bit trapped, like Martin Sheen鈥檚 character in Apocalypse Now, stewing in Saigon: 鈥淓very minute I stay in this room, I get weaker.鈥� Wayne was out there in the bush, getting stronger.

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More than 250 million years ago, in the Triassic period, what is now western Utah was a broad coastal flat of the supercontinent Pangaea. The Moenkopi Formation, as it is known, saw five million years鈥� worth of sedimentary layers鈥攇ypsum, siltstone, mudstone鈥攄umped onto the flats by oceans and rivers.

Nearly 200 million years later, the gradual seismic uplift of the Colorado Plateau produced a rugged topography, sculpted over time by wind and water into a craggy collection of buttes, canyons, and mesas. Today that ancient sedimentation, hoisted upward and exposed to air, is visible in the form of striking multi-hued bands.

One of those uplift features, known as Gooseberry Mesa, just south of Virgin, Utah, is a huge flat-topped butte with a towering 5,200 feet of elevation, prized by mountain bikers for its lunar-like slickrock surface. Trailing away from Gooseberry like an alligator tail is a long, thin, jagged ridge that has lost its protective caprock surface. In the slow march of geologic time, it is crumbling away.

For the past two years, this ridge has been home to Red Bull Rampage, the world鈥檚 most famous鈥�some might say infamous鈥攆reeride mountain-bike event, which each year generates a torrent of jaw-dropping footage, streamed live to hundreds of thousands of viewers, along with hand-wringing social media posts from fans and pundits wondering if this is the year it all went just a bit too far.

Like its counterpart in snowboarding, freeriding began as a maverick pursuit, with early-nineties mountain bikers attempting to ride the seemingly unrideable. 鈥淲e sent it as raw as we could,鈥� says Brett Tippie, a former pro who helped pioneer the sport in Kamloops, British Columbia. 鈥淲e might kick a few stones out of the way, but it was basically raw mountain.鈥� The first , in 2001, had the same DIY spirit, but over time the lines have become more engineered, the runs more flowy and trick filled, the jumps bigger and the stakes higher. To date, no one has died at Rampage, but serious injuries are not uncommon鈥攊n 2015, a crash left the rider Paul Basagoitia paralyzed.

The goal of Rampage is to descend from a wooden platform just below Gooseberry Mesa to the finish corral, more than 600 feet below, in less than three minutes. Riders get two chances. Along the way, navigating that ancient sedimentary geology, they perform any number of tricks, from Supermans to suicide no-handers, no-foots to nac-nacs, tailwhips to front flips. Each ride is scored on the difficulty of the line, control and fluidity, air and amplitude, and style.

(Rampage, much to the ire of the freeride community, has always been an all-male affair. This year, Red Bull halted its fledgling women鈥檚 event, called Formation. The company says it鈥檚 鈥減ostponed鈥� and is working on an eventual return.)

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It鈥檚 5:30 A.M. on an unseasonably warm October morning, and I鈥檓 standing in the driveway of my New Jersey home, waiting for my friend Paul. The lawn sprinklers have just kicked on, their susurration joining the predawn chorus of crickets. A bright, waxing gibbous moon is reflected in the hood of my Subaru. I鈥檓 about to take a good, long hike鈥攖he longest I鈥檝e ever done in a day鈥攆or no real reason other than an obscure edict from the 26^th president of the United States.

On December 9, 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt signed, with little fanfare, , headlined 鈥淢arine Corps Officers鈥� Physical Fitness.鈥� It directed each officer of the United States Marine Corps to undergo a physical examination and a series of tests every two years.

The tests were simple. Officers would have to ride a horse 90 miles, 鈥渢his distance to be covered in three days.鈥� Officers ranked 鈥渋n the grade of captain or lieutenant鈥� were also required to walk 50 miles, with 鈥渁ctual marching time, including rests, twenty hours.鈥� Seven hundred yards of this needed to be completed 鈥渙n the double-time鈥濃�攕omething like a slow jog. This test too could be spread across three days, allowing the soldiers sleep and recovery time.

Order 989鈥檚 rationale was spelled out bluntly: 鈥淚n battle, time is essential and ground may have to be covered on the run; if these officers are not equal to the average physical strength of their companies the men will be held back, resulting in unnecessary loss of life and probably defeat.鈥�

Neither the Army nor the Navy, which each got their own respective executive orders with the same test, escaped Roosevelt鈥檚 attention. 鈥淚 have been unpleasantly struck,鈥� he observed in a letter to Secretary of the Navy Truman Newberry, 鈥渂y the lack of physical condition of some of the older officers, and even some of the younger officers.鈥�

Roosevelt was in the waning days of his presidency, a time when outgoing leaders often try to settle up unfinished business, notes Ryan Swanson, associate professor of history at the University of Mexico and author of . 鈥淓xecutive orders sort of come and go, and aren鈥檛 really that enforceable.鈥� But the one-time Rough Rider鈥檚 final volleys stemmed, Swanson argues, from concerns that, after a long period without a war, the Army was becoming a bunch of bureaucrats, unprepared for conflict.

And then there was Roosevelt himself. There was probably no other President in U.S. history so concerned with the bodies of the body politic. 鈥淚 wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life,鈥� he said in a famous 1899 speech that mixed personal uplift with more than a bit of saber rattling. Swanson says that Roosevelt, like other Progressive-era reformers, worried that 鈥渦rbanization was making us weaker鈥濃�攖hat we were living in unhealthy cities, that we were toiling in offices rather than plowing the fields of the Agrarian Republic (by 1900, only 40 percent of the country worked in agriculture).

There was, undoubtedly, some political stage-management at work. Roosevelt knew how to project the image of a strong leader. But he certainly walked the walk. Plagued by asthma and extreme myopia as a child, battling injury and struggling with his own weight as an adult, Roosevelt spent virtually his whole life engaged in the 鈥渟trenuous life.鈥� One of the first things Roosevelt did upon assuming the White House was to build a tennis court, on which he played hundreds of times. He was an avid boxer and dabbled in jujitsu. And one of his favorite ways to shake off the stresses of high office, notes Swanson, was to set off on impromptu hikes through Rock Creek Park, five miles north of the White House. He particularly favored what he called a 鈥減oint-to-point walk鈥� wherein he would perambulate from point A to B, directly, no matter what cliff, pond, or impenetrable vegetation was in the way. Roosevelt, recalled British ambassador Mortimer Durand, 鈥渕ade me struggle through bushes and over rocks for two hours and a half, at an impossible speed, til I was so done that I could hardly stand.鈥�

And so, when Roosevelt issued his series of executive orders on the fitness of the military branches鈥攖he predecessors to today鈥檚 physical readiness tests, or PRTs鈥攊t wasn鈥檛 merely the fiat of an armchair general. This was a man, after all, who, after being shot during a speech in Milwaukee, continued orating with a bullet inside of him. (The bullet was slowed somewhat by a sheaf of papers tucked into the inner pocket of his coat).

The orders immediately kicked up complaints. As historical journal The Grog recounts, 鈥淣avy Surgeon James Gatewood complained that the endurance test would leave participants in a 鈥榙epressed physical state.鈥欌�� The Navy鈥檚 surgeon general said it could put the lives of officers over 50 at risk. As if to carry the torch for his own initiative, on January 13, 1909, Roosevelt (then 51) and a small party of Naval officers set out for a horseback ride to Warrenton, Virginia, a distance of 49 miles each way. Following a 3:45 A.M. breakfast of steak and eggs, Roosevelt, on his own steed Roswell, set out into a day marked by freezing rain, eventually returning to the White House at 8:30 P.M., declaring the ride鈥攜ep, you guessed it鈥斺�淏ully!鈥�

Shortly after, Roosevelt was out of office. His successor, William Taft, demolished the tennis courts. A , 193, did away with the test and called for a monthly ten-mile walk, 鈥渢o be completed in neither more than four nor less than three hours.鈥� Roosevelt鈥檚 challenge may have faded into historical memory, were it not for its later rediscovery by John F. Kennedy who engaged in his own Rooseveltian crusade, albeit with a Cold War twist.

According to the podcast Ultrarunning History, Kennedy charged his Marine Commandant with putting a group of his officers to the test in 1962. While not intended for the general public, word got out, and there was a brief, nationwide 鈥�50-mile frenzy鈥� in the early 1960s, with everyone from Eagle Scouts to a mother of three to the President鈥檚 brother, Robert, completing 50-mile walks. But this mania soon subsided, and all most of us know today of Kennedy鈥檚 fitness program were the push-ups and shuttle runs we might have been asked to do in our grade school gyms.

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A few years ago, after a decades-long, 60,000-mile-plus love affair with road cycling, I started dabbling in mountain biking. I did this largely because I鈥檇 moved from New York City, where the discipline was essentially alien, to New Jersey, where the off-road riding was not only close by, but surprisingly good and abundant. I initially pictured the transition to be merely a shift in terrain. A bike is a bike, after all. But I was vastly mistaken. Like anything in the world of cycling, mountain biking comes with its own inscrutable rules and mores, its own fiercely inhabited subcultures, and its own baffling array of clothing and equipment choices. Did I need a trail bike? A cross-country bike? A 鈥渄owncountry鈥� bike? How much travel did I need in my suspension? Did I need 27.5-inch wheels, or the 29-inch variety? Never had I seen 1.5 inches听loom so large in people鈥檚 worldview.

But soon enough I was out on my local trails. Like beginner drivers, my motions were twitchy and hesitant, my focus almost entirely on what was directly in front of me鈥攅very fearsome root and rock flooding my brain with data. In road cycling, the asphalt you鈥檙e riding on, barring a pothole or two, is an afterthought. But in mountain biking the surface was a moving puzzle, requiring careful attention, planning, and decision-making.

I plodded along, my improvement hindered by the inconvenient fact that, for me, mountain biking requires driving to a trailhead versus riding straight out of my garage. So I usually default听to road riding, keeping my mountain-biking mediocrity safely intact.

Thus was the state of affairs when, one weekend last summer, I was invited to ride in Vermont with a group of friends. There would be some gravel riding鈥攎ore equipment choices, more rules, more subcultures鈥攁nd some mountain biking, including a visit to . I had been dimly aware of the movement by ski resorts to try and generate summer dollars by ferrying cyclists on lifts up to their snowless summits, but I鈥檇 never stepped foot in such a place. Which was quite obvious to me when I arrived at the so-called Beast of the East wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and a traditional bike helmet, and found myself amid what looked like a casting call for Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome; it was packed with dusty men and women, with thousand-yard stares, wearing body armor, neck braces, and full-face helmets. A sign, no doubt crafted at the behest of a lawyer somewhere, warned: 鈥淚njuries are a common and expected part of mountain biking.鈥�

A friend glanced at my bike and advised me to lower the seatpost: 鈥淵ou鈥檙e not going to be pedaling much.鈥� That鈥檚 when I realized I鈥檇 never bothered to set up the dropper post on my Canyon Neuron. Coming from road riding, where a precise saddle height is sacred and Never to Be Changed, I figured it鈥檇 be superfluous. (And, full confession, I couldn鈥檛 figure out the install instructions that synced up the little switch on the handlebars to the seatpost.) I hastened to the repair room, where the park鈥檚 mechanics quite graciously set up my post in a matter of minutes, making no comment about this forehead-slapping moment in noob history.

We hoisted our bikes onto the lift, rode to the top of Snowshed, home to the beginner terrain, took in the verdant, panoramic view, and then headed down Easy Street, one of the park鈥檚 few green runs (bike parks, I learned, retain the green-blue-black rating system utilized by ski areas everywhere). I rode it, tentatively and with excessive amounts of braking, entering the precisely sculpted banked berms low and exiting high, exactly counter to how it should be done. For my efforts I was rewarded with a more technical blue trail, known as Step It Up. According to Strava, I was among the slowest riders to ever descend that route鈥擨 ranked 5,077 out of 5,459鈥攂ut it still felt like I was flying. And then, a minute or so into the ride, I encountered a sloped earthen structure looking like one of the . This was a 鈥渢abletop.鈥� It is meant to be jumped. But it was also, as they say, rollable, meaning it could simply听be ridden over. Which I kept doing: barreling toward the upward slope before suddenly freaking out and jamming on the brakes, trying to maintain control as my body pitched forward.

That afternoon was a revelation. Normally, in my cycling life, I鈥檝e suffered on the climb and been rewarded on the descent. Killington flipped that idea on its head. Here I suffered on the descents鈥攎y heart was in my throat, my hands, back, and knees were on fire, I crashed more than once鈥攁nd was rewarded with a tranquil, breezy lift ride to the top. (And whatever you may think about the lack of pedaling, at least has found that the majority of a downhill ride results in a heart rate in 鈥渁 zone at or above an intensity level associated with improvements in health-related fitness.鈥�)

But I was left with the nagging feeling that I鈥檇 left something on the table鈥攐r the tabletop, more precisely. I wanted to know what it would feel like to leave the ground on my bike. I wanted to catch air.

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Last winter, laid up in bed with a severe bout of the Omicron variant, I began obsessively watching Martijn Doolaard鈥檚 . Doolaard is a 38-year-old Dutchman who, about a year earlier, had bought a set of primitive shepherd鈥檚 cabins in the western Italian Alps for less than the price of a decent new car. He had the immediate intent of fixing them up, and a broader, more abstract goal of living simply in nature.

The first video he posted, in October 2021, laid out what might be called the Doolaard style: A Kubrickian drone shot, gliding over a wooded, fog-enshrouded mountaintop, backed by a minimalist orchestral score. The shot then cuts to the back seat of his car, and we see Doolaard driving through the forest, en route to his new adventure. 鈥淗ey guys, welcome to this channel,鈥� he says. 鈥淢y name is Martijn Doolaard.鈥� His first name, pronounced in the Dutch way, comes across as something like 鈥渕uhr-tine.鈥�

In the year since that humble start, over more than 50 episodes, he has built a feverishly devoted base of half a million subscribers and growing. They tune in to watch Doolaard, who uses a single tripod-mounted camera, the occasional drone, Google Sketch, a suite of power tools, and an almost preternatural sense of calm as he tackles a seemingly never-ending list of tasks involved in trying to make a home from a pair of century-old buildings that lack heat, plumbing, and electricity.

And while the performance of those tasks is shown in painstaking detail, one gets the sense that, for many viewers, this is far more than a home-improvement show. It鈥檚 a form of therapy鈥攁n antidote to modern life, online and off. It鈥檚 a small, carefully ordered world they can return to week after week.

鈥淓very Monday morning I come to my office, turn on my computer, check for Martijn鈥檚 new video, and ask myself if I will ever be able to change my life the way he did,鈥� one commenter writes. 鈥淲e鈥檙e all mesmerized,鈥� says another. 鈥淵ou鈥檙e quirky but common, quiet but full of expression, alone with a plethora of viewers, brilliant but humble, serious but whimsical and we can鈥檛 get enough.鈥� Another fan puts it simply: 鈥淭his is more addictive than love.鈥�

I am one of those addicts. Bingeing doesn鈥檛 quite seem the right word; it feels more like lapping up a slow drip of sweet dew, a kind of IV for the soul. First there鈥檚 Doolaard himself. Tall, bearded, and wearing a dark, wide-brimmed hat, he looks plucked from the world of 17th-century Dutch portrait painting. Unlike so many frenetic, teeth-whitened influencers who populate social media, he struck me as a serene old soul鈥攁n idea further supported by the Amish hipster getups (suspenders, vests) he wears while sawing planks of wood or hauling rocks up a hill. Then there鈥檚 the way everything is shot, like Norwegian slow television with a healthy side helping of ASMR; I never imagined woodworking could be so worth watching or hearing. In line with the current vogue in social media of romanticizing your life, Doolaard has a way of making the most mundane things鈥攑olishing his work boots, brewing coffee in a moka pot鈥攕eem like reverential ceremonies.

There are any number of YouTubers chronicling the renovation of an old homestead in Alaska or France鈥檚 Loire Valley, but none have struck me in quite the same way. They aren鈥檛 as good with a camera; their content consists of couples or families, so you feel less like a spiritual partner in the project and more like an invited spectator; sometimes they get professional help for the hard stuff.

Doolaard, meanwhile, is an unabashed aesthete who turns manual labor into visual poetry. This is a man, after all, who admitted to buying a scythe to cut the grass because he saw a character do it in Terrence Malick鈥檚 2019 film A Hidden Life. He鈥檚 not afraid of the hard stuff, plunging into fields in which he has no experience with a mixture of steadfast resolve and take-it-as-it-comes pragmatism. As he installed the first source of running water on the property鈥攁fter watching some instructional YouTube videos鈥攈e looked at the plumbing line he鈥檇 just put in and said, with a shrug, 鈥淚 hope it鈥檚 buried deep enough.鈥� He鈥檚 learning in real time, making mistakes, and even these he handles with calm aplomb. As someone who tends to freak out when a screw gets stripped, I found it cathartic, and tremendously inspiring.

鈥淚 went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately.鈥� So wrote Henry David Thoreau, famously, in Walden, the totemic 19th-century ode to downscale, off-the-grid living. Thoreau鈥檚 simple life in the woods was never quite as simple as he made out鈥攆or one thing, he lived just a short walk from his family home, and received weekly visits from his mother and sisters. But the spirit of the thing endures, and I kept seeing parallels between Walden and Doolaard鈥檚 YouTube channel.

鈥淚 made a study of the ancient and indispensable art of bread making,鈥� wrote Thoreau; Doolaard, during a number of episodes, experiments with baking over an open fire. Like Thoreau, who devoted a whole chapter of Walden to 鈥淪ounds,鈥� Doolaard becomes exquisitely attuned to the natural soundscape around him鈥攁nd learns to deal with his 鈥渂rute neighbors,鈥� meaning wildlife. And like Thoreau, who wrote, 鈥淚 made no haste in my work, but rather made the most of it,鈥� Doolaard seems as interested in the process as the result.

But what does it mean to live a Walden-like life of natural solitude in the always-on realm of social media, where your exploits are followed, in close to real time, by an audience of hundreds of thousands? What possesses someone to trade the comforts of contemporary life for cold outdoor showers and no mailing address, to tackle a tricky renovation amid challenging conditions, in a country where you don鈥檛 speak the language鈥攁nd why would so many find that an appealing viewing experience? I wanted to meet the man behind the channel, so I headed to Italy.

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In the summer of 2019, Tomas Quinones, a Portland-based artist, quality assurance engineer for the mapping app , and enthusiastic long-distance cyclist, was undertaking a seven-day bikepacking trip, covering some 360 miles of remote high desert country in Southern Oregon, not far from the Nevada border.

His trip had been punctuated with the usual minor random setbacks and sketchy moments that bedevil the adventurer. He鈥檇 lost his shoes, and was riding on a pair of Bedrock sandals. He鈥檇 heard a low growling outside his tent one night鈥攁 mountain lion鈥攁nd gripped his only defense, a small fixed-blade knife. His water supply was sometimes uncertain. But there had also been those moments of unexpected grace: a couple parked on the side of a dirt road that offered to share their lunch; or the guy in the pickup truck who pulled up alongside Quinones and quizzed him about his sandals. 鈥淗e was like, 鈥榟ey are you doing a mountain bike ride, cool!鈥欌�� recalls Quinones. 鈥淭hen he said, 鈥楬ere, have a beer!鈥� And I thought, it鈥檚 ten in the morning, but sure, a nice early beer.鈥�

On the penultimate day of his trip, he was riding down a dusty track when he came upon what he first thought was a cow, sprawled across the ground. It turned out to be a man, slipping in and out of consciousness on the desert floor. The man was clearly dehydrated; Quinones had a hunch he might be diabetic. He tried to give him some water, with little success. A cursory examination of the man鈥檚 nearby campsite turned up a pistol in a pillowcase. 鈥淢y mind went to some pretty dark places,鈥� he says. 鈥淟ike, was this a drug deal gone bad?鈥澨�

Quinones, who had done a bit of training as a volunteer in a search-and-rescue group, tried to rationally sift through his options. The nearest paved road was a good bike ride away. He thought about climbing a nearby ridge in the fleeting hope of getting a signal, but wondered if his sandals would be up to the task (he鈥檇 also been hearing plenty of rattlesnakes). He thought about trying to flag down whatever was kicking up dust on the horizon, but it turned out to be just cows. Finally, he decided to send an SOS鈥攈is first ever鈥攐n his SPOT location tracker. 鈥淚 didn鈥檛 really know what to expect,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 knew from experience that when the SPOT has to send up any notification, it can take 20 minutes.鈥�

On that day, the fates spun a propitious web of geosynchronous orbits, terrestrial emergency response, and a particularly prepared cyclist, and an ambulance arrived within an hour. As Quinones would later learn, the man whose life he saved, Greg Randolph, was a 72-year-old retired Air National Guard technician and keen backcountry explorer whose Jeep had gotten wedged in a hole in a dry creek bed. He鈥檇 been in the desert for five days. He was out of food, water, and was, in fact, diabetic, without medicine, and in the early stages of a coma. Quinones says for all the strangeness of the situation鈥斺�渋t鈥檚 such an unlikely scenario to come across a person laying in the middle of the road鈥濃�攈e never had a doubt about what he would do. 鈥淭here was no hesitation, I had to do something. There鈥檚 literally no one else out here that鈥檚 going to find this guy,鈥� he says. 鈥淲ithin the next 24 hours, he鈥檚 going to be jerky鈥攖he buzzards will be eating him.鈥�

Quinones, who鈥檇 received little gestures of help over the course of his trip, paid it forward, with interest.

Odds are, if you have spent any time in the wilderness, you too will have experienced these gestures of kindness from strangers, or given them yourself鈥攅ven if they were nothing so dramatic as the aid rendered by Quinones. As a keen and longtime cyclist, I have always been amazed that when I have had some mechanical issue, or simply been stationed on the side of the road to check my phone, alone or even in a group, another passing cyclist will almost inevitably ask: 鈥淵ou alright?鈥�

Once, in California鈥檚 Marin County, I was out on a bike ride, in a fairly remote area, when I got a flat tire. I realized I鈥檇 foolishly forgotten to pack my tools and tubes. My cell phone showed zero bars. Soon though, a woman pulled up in an old Ford pickup. 鈥淵ou need help?鈥� She gestured for me to throw my bike in the back, and drove me to the nearest town. It later struck me that I couldn鈥檛 remember the last time I鈥檇 gotten a ride from a stranger; in fact, it may have been the first. The woman, it turned out, was a native of Denmark, and I remembered wondering if this was more common behavior there.

Hitchhiking is one of those things, notes sociologist Jonathan Purkis in his book , that is presumed to be obsolete, killed off by sensationalistic reports of highway violence, so-called 鈥渓itigation culture,鈥� as well as neoliberalism鈥檚 ethos of, as Purkis writes, 鈥渇avoring of individualistic and consumer-driven attitudes toward social problems.鈥� Even Lonely Planet, that original Bible of the hippie trail, now posts disclaimers like: 鈥渉itchhiking is never entirely safe and we cannot really recommend it.鈥� Indeed, very little in this world is ever entirely safe.听For that pickup driver, I might have been a harbinger of violence; less statistically likely, she might have been a serial killer with a fetish for lycra. Both of us agreed, in that moment, to put these thoughts aside and engage in what Purgis, quoting French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, calls 鈥渢he power of the gift without return.鈥�

What is it about being outside, in nature, that seems to prompt people to want to help? The first, and perhaps most obvious, explanation, is that in the wild there may not be any other help. In what psychologists term the 鈥渄iffusion of responsibility,鈥� or the 鈥渂ystander effect,鈥� the more people who are in the presence of someone needing help, the less likely any of those people are to actually provide it. They might think others will help, they might be unsure of what to do, or the mere fact of others not doing anything provides a modeling cue for them not to do anything. When Quinones found Randolph, there were no bystanders. 鈥淚f I had seen this guy in downtown Portland, where there鈥檚 a lot of homeless people, I probably wouldn鈥檛 have batted an eye,鈥� he told me. 鈥淏ecause I see it all the time.鈥�

But another idea, one that has been receiving an increasing amount of research attention, is that there is something about nature itself that seems to promote what psychologists call 鈥減rosocial鈥� attitudes. As a in The Journal of Environmental Psychology suggests, exposure to nature can prompt feelings of transcendence鈥攁 sense of connection to other people, to the world around you, to the cosmos. 鈥淓xperiencing transcendence,鈥� the authors write, 鈥渋s associated with less of a focus on the self as a distinct and uniquely important individual, while simultaneously increasing focusing on entities outside the self, including nature and other people not necessarily part of one鈥檚 immediate social groups.鈥� In that study, researchers interviewed subjects in a parking lot, before or after they set out on a hike. In exchange, they were given the chance to enter a drawing for an iPad or to make a small donation to charity. People were more likely to make the donation after they hiked than before. There was one exception in which charitable giving shrank: when people, in a separate study, were asked to first write about a time they felt distinct from others.

These findings have been replicated elsewhere. In , people who watched a five-minute clip of Planet Earth were more generous in an experimental economic game; in still another study, people gazing up at tall trees were more likely to provide help than people looking at a tall building.听 To sum up all these experiments: when you feel cosmically small鈥攕tanding in front of a vast gorge or in the middle of a silent forest鈥攜ou are more likely to act big.听

Altruism is often underplayed in narratives about humans in nature, which have privileged notions of frontier self-sufficiency or Emersonian self-reliance. But the first thing Thoreau did when he went to build his cabin in Walden was borrow an ax from his neighbor鈥攁nd the land he built it on belonged to his buddy Emerson. It is tempting to read books like Into the Wild as homages to rugged individualism, but viewed through another lens, the story of Christopher McCandless is one of repeatedly getting help from, or giving help to, the myriad strangers he meets (the last person he saw gave him a pair of rubber boots鈥攁nd wanted to give him more).

Perhaps the greatest concentration of kindness from strangers in the wild is the 鈥�trail magic鈥� experienced every year on the Appalachian and Pacific Crest Trails. 鈥淭rail magic, in its most basic sense鈥攔andom acts of kindness from strangers鈥攈as been going on since people started hiking the trail,鈥� says Justin Kooyman, Associate Director of Trail Operations at the Pacific Crest Trail Association (PCTA). 鈥淓verything from the ride into town, to paying for a hiker鈥檚 meal, to offering someone a place to stay.鈥�

Hikers helping hikers, in light of the previous arguments about nature and prosociality, makes sense: when you鈥檙e one of a relatively handful of people in the midst of trying to get through a hard task in challenging wilderness, it would be hard to resist someone鈥檚 direct appeal for help. But what about the many non-hikers who participate in trail magic? 鈥淔rom what I鈥檝e seen on the trail,鈥� Kooymans says, 鈥渢here just seems to be a pretty genuine appreciation, respect, and desire to support people who are in the middle of a pretty hard endeavor.鈥澨�

Troy Glover, a professor of Recreation and Leisure Studies at Canada鈥檚 University of Waterloo, has examined the phenomenon of trail magic on the Appalachian Trail. One theme he kept seeing repeated in hiker鈥檚 accounts, apart from the surprise of receiving听 what he calls 鈥渘onnormative kindness鈥� out of the blue, was the almost utopian sense of community that emerged on the trail, one that was often hard to leave behind. Many of those former thru-hikers, Glover noted鈥攐ften experiencing a post-trail letdown鈥攂ecame trail angels themselves. 鈥淭he hikers鈥� gratitude for their receipt of trail magic,鈥� he says, 鈥渓ed them to contribute to an already established norm of upstream reciprocity.鈥�

As thru-hiking has increased in popularity, including on the Pacific Crest Trail, there has almost been an overabundance of helping behavior, which has led to challenges for the PCTA. Unattended food, for one, and the bears it brings. But there are also reports of large encampments stationed at the trailheads鈥攅quipped with lawn chairs, solar showers, food and drink, and what Kooymans calls a 鈥減arty-type atmosphere.鈥� This, he says, 鈥渃an really detract from the more natural, undeveloped environment that many people are going out to experience.鈥� He鈥檚 wary, he says, of 鈥渇inger wagging,鈥� but the idea is there: keep the magic in trail magic.

When we venture into the wild, we become vulnerable. 鈥淏eing in a vulnerable position,鈥� writes Purgis in Driving with Strangers, 鈥渕akes you look at the world differently.鈥� It can also change how people view you; to admit or reveal vulnerability can bring out the best in others. In her book , Rebecca Solnit chronicles how people living through natural disasters, contrary to falling apart, actually come together, strongly. 鈥淚n the suspension of the usual order and failure of most systems,鈥� she writes, 鈥渨e are free to live and act another way.鈥� Similarly, in the wild, where we are stripped of our normal possessions, surroundings, and identities, we seem more willing to go that extra mile for someone; it鈥檚 in nature, ironically, that we can learn new things about humanity.

听

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The first thing Ted Metellus did when the 2021 wrapped up, apart from getting a decent night鈥檚 sleep, was to start planning for this year鈥檚 race. 鈥淚t鈥檚 on my mind all the time,鈥� says Metellus, the race director and vice president of the New York Road Runners (NYRR), which puts on the race. This was last February. Stretching across five boroughs in the country鈥檚 largest, densest city, with as many athletes on course that would normally fill the stands at a sporting event鈥攖hough it also has its many thousands of spectators鈥攖he marathon is a complex negotiation of time, space, and people. 鈥淚t is one of the single largest mobilizations of resources in the city,鈥� says Metellus.

By sheer numbers, it is impressive. Last year, even with a reduced pandemic field of more than 21,000 runners, some 41,240 gallons of Poland Spring water鈥攁nd 1.4 million paper cups鈥攚ere dispensed to runners on course (in addition to the 45,000-plus bottles given out at the start); along with 30,000 Honey Stinger gels. Some 122,760 pounds of clothing was shed by the runners at the start, then collected and given to Goodwill. There鈥檚 a medical station every mile, even therapy dogs and psychologists at the start. 鈥淪ometimes people just need a moment to kind of settle themselves in when you鈥檙e getting ready for an event of this scope,鈥� says Metellus.

This year, the marathon is back at full strength, with more than 50,000 participants expected to throng the streets of New York this Sunday. The job of understanding how that small city鈥檚 worth of people will travel the 26.2 miles from Staten Island to Central Park鈥攁nd to ensure it happens with as little friction as possible鈥攆alls largely to Marcel Altenburg, a senior lecturer in crowd science at the Manchester Metropolitan University. Born in Germany, and a former Captain in the Bundeswehr, Altenburg went to Manchester to pursue a degree in crowd science, a discipline, he notes, that got its real start in 1989 with the infamous , when 97 people were killed in a crush caused by overcrowding. He stayed on and became a lecturer.

Since then, he鈥檚 been involved with numerous high-profile events, from presidential inaugurations to rock concerts to football championships to, most recently, managing the massive crowds that queued to pay respect to Queen Elizabeth. And, of course, any number of marathons, from Berlin to Chicago. In 2016, he began working with the NYRR on the world鈥檚 largest race. On Sunday, at 8 A.M., when the first wave of athletes鈥攖he professional handcyclists鈥攕et off on the course, Altenburg will be at the start village, looking to see if his exquisitely calculated script plays out as calculated.

The starting process is itself massive: It will easily take longer to dispense the five waves of runners, in 15 鈥渃orrals,鈥� across three starting points, than it will take the best runners to complete the race (it takes 18 minutes, less than a pro can run a 5K, just to dispense each group). And the start, from a planning perspective, is everything. 鈥淚t is the last moment we can influence the race,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 the last time someone listens to you鈥攖he last time we can tell them, stay right, wait for a second. From听then on, the race is on them.鈥�

It鈥檚 a bit like a water tap. You can control the source, but once the water is flowing, you cannot easily call it back. When he started working with the Road Runners, he had a revelation. 鈥淲e were convinced that the way we start impacts everything on the course,鈥� Altenburg says. 鈥淭hat everything on the course is of our own making.鈥�

Once you had accurately modeled the start, you could predict, with unprecedented accuracy, everything that happened afterwards. After backwards engineering previous years鈥� data, Altenburg advised that changing to 15 corrals, from 12, would allow better control. He told Metellus: 鈥淚f you give us the start, we can predict the finish, and the whole 26.2 miles in between.鈥�

Breaking the race up into five minute windows, Altenburg projected that the largest finishing wave would consist of 1,366 runners. There were 1,367. 鈥淚 know who the guy was,鈥� Altenburg says, laughing. 鈥淗e was from Mexico.鈥� But his overall estimate was 99.93 percent accurate. The code had been cracked, his 鈥淪tart Right鈥� predictive algorithm born. Now, any contingency that might arrive鈥攅ven a global pandemic that suddenly required six-foot social distancing鈥攃ould be modeled.

The rolling-start, as opposed to the 鈥渙pen start,鈥� is now fairly de facto at most major international marathons, but some races, Altenburg notes, 鈥渁re in love with this big crowd picture at the start of the race鈥攁 guy shoots a gun, and everyone start at the same time.鈥� But that鈥檚 no longer possible in the largest events. 鈥淭he races are bigger,鈥� he says, 鈥渁nd the cities are definitely not getting bigger.鈥�

With chip timing, he adds, 鈥渢hey don鈥檛 need to be on the start line鈥攜ou get to start two hours later and still get your finishing time.鈥� Key to this, he says, is making the departure point narrower than anything they鈥檒l experience on course鈥攁nd keeping the 鈥渨ater tap鈥� open only to 70 percent. It鈥檚 a bit like 鈥渞amp metering,鈥� those traffic lights that tell you when you can enter the highway. In essence, you go slower to go faster.

What differentiates a marathon from other crowd-management scenarios is its dynamic nature. While it is, essentially, a rolling queue, it鈥檚 a queue, says Altenburg, 鈥渋n which everyone is constantly changing the order of everything.鈥�

Compared to even a large event like the Queen鈥檚 funeral, which saw upwards of 250,000 people, 鈥渁 marathon is, to be honest, 50,000 times more complicated.鈥� With something like a soccer match, the crowds may be massive, but the behavior is generally constrained. 鈥淚 need to get them in, that鈥檚 a big task. I need them to sit down, then they go to the loo, then they go home.鈥� These are all big steps, he says. 鈥淏ut in a marathon, they never sit once.鈥� They are arriving 鈥渂y all means of transport,鈥� then circulating around the start village, then they get on the road, then they鈥檙e finishing, grabbing their poncho, and trying to find their family or friends. 鈥淔ifty-five-thousand people are making their way in shorts, and everybody鈥檚 got their own story, everybody with their own pace.鈥�

Marathons, in effect, cannot be understood as a system. Armed with huge amounts of computing power, data from previous races, and a hope that people more or less run at the pace they have said they are going to run, Altenburg needs to calculate every single runner. 鈥淭he ideal experience is that I see the same 100 people throughout most of my race,鈥� he says. 鈥淭he organizer is going to great lengths to minimize the number of overtakes on the course.鈥�

Being constantly overtaken, or by contrast constantly having to 鈥渮ig-zag鈥� past groups of other runners, is not only stressful, he says, but can be unsafe (the algorithms provide for an ideal of three square meters for each runner, a number that was briefly increased during the era of social distancing). The professional field, says Altenburg, will 鈥渋mmediately stretch,鈥� while runners further back may spend more time together. But people are not data points, they will do the unexpected. They are chaos. I speak here from experience. When I, eager and undertrained, participated in the event in 2017, I ran a fairly brisk half-marathon, passing many runners鈥攚hich was often not easy on narrow Brooklyn streets鈥攂efore slowing in the second half, and essentially blowing up at the end. While my finish was statistically average, I was, at a more micro level, often an outlier.

And then there is the city itself. 鈥淚t鈥檚 the same race every year, the name is the same, but New York is a living organism,鈥� Altenburg says. Roadways are altered, massive construction sites arise, new bike lanes are built; all things that might not affect the individual runner, Altenburg says, but could have system-level implications. During the pandemic, on-street dining emerged, and many structures have remained, further constraining the streetscape (for some, NYRR asks for temporary closures). Every five years, the course is painstakingly measured.

Working with the city鈥檚 Department of Transportation (DOT), the NYRR conducts a number of course inspections in the months leading up to the event, flagging potential obstacles. 鈥淲e do not allow steel plates on the roadway,鈥� the DOT鈥檚 Jessica Colaizzi told me. 鈥淲e stand very firm on that and we work closely with contractors to make sure the plates disappear.鈥�

Then there are things that are outside of anyone鈥檚 control, but must still be factored in, like weather. This year鈥檚 event is promising higher-than-normal temperatures. 鈥淲hen the temperature goes up by five degrees Fahrenheit, we run a different simulation,鈥� Altenburg says. Medical resources can be shifted to potential trouble spots (temperatures above 70 degrees, as Sunday is promising, are associated with an elevated risk of heat stroke).

For the professional field, Altenburg says, this will hardly matter鈥攖hey鈥檒l be finished by the time warmer temperatures set in. But for everyone else, this could have an impact. And not only, Altenburg says, for the slower, later-starting runners. 鈥淵ou might not be a professional, but someone who knows what they鈥檙e doing, and wants to break the three-hour barrier. That鈥檚 exactly when it鈥檚 hot, when you鈥檙e going to your limits.鈥�

While each runner runs their own race, Altenburg has observed some aggregate trends about the New York City Marathon over the years. 鈥淧eople always speed up when they hit Manhattan,鈥� he says, 鈥渆ven though the advice is don鈥檛鈥攜ou still have eight miles to go!鈥�

But another trend is that as the race gets larger, it is actually getting slower. 鈥淭hey are attracting a lot of people who see it as a bucket list race,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 slower because it鈥檚 more inclusive. It鈥檚 an amazing race, and you want to do it at least once.鈥� Altenburg himself has run it, in 2015. But in his head, and on his computers, he鈥檚 always running it. 鈥淎s a scientist, it鈥檚 bananas. I absolutely love it.鈥�

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One night, settling into my sleeping bag beneath the stretched nylon of a tent, I felt a familiar sense of vague dread. With my headlamp extinguished, a suffocating darkness enveloped me. The overwhelming quiet was punctuated by unsettling sounds: cracking twigs, strange cries, the rustling of the wind echoing like the breath of some malevolent god. The feeble barrier of the tent鈥攇ood for stopping little more than insects and moisture鈥攚as suddenly like a screen, upon which I projected, like shadow puppets, random fears dredged from my memory. It would be a long night.

I know what did this to me: horror movies. More specifically, that popular strand of the genre that features people鈥攗sually young, often a couple鈥�in the woods, encountering some dark force, whether human, supernatural, or some combination of the two. In England, they call the genre听鈥渇orest horror.鈥� This rich tradition includes well-known titles like and ; lesser known, hard-to-find entries like or ; and more recent offerings like last year鈥檚 , now streaming听on Netflix, or听Paramount+鈥檚 , just out this month. And I have seen them all.

Like all genres, forest horror traffics in a number of timeworn tropes. The protagonists of the film, after first driving from some crowded urban setting, will soon find themselves on quieter roads. They will sing along to old songs on the radio. They will stop for gas or supplies in some greasy, fly-specked dive, where they encounter a cantankerous clerk whose face will assume a foreboding expression the minute they leave. They may, in a bit of foreshadowing, unexpectedly strike an animal on the road. In the woods, they will find there is no cell service. They will get lost. They will be missing some key piece of equipment. They will come across some Runic symbols carved into a tree. If it is a group of friends, only one is likely to make it out alive. If it is a couple, some simmering history or unresolved tension will come to the boil鈥攆orest horror reveals camping to be the ultimate relationship stress test.

As someone who occasionally makes his living by being outside, I find my tent-terror obsession a bit self-defeating鈥攍ike an aviation enthusiast who pores over the black-box recordings of plane crashes. Why would I want to mix up my love of nature with all these troubling visions? After all, there are enough ways for things to go wrong in the wild without adding on depraved locals or Pagan sacrifices. Maybe it鈥檚 just another endurance test. Or perhaps I鈥檓 simply exorcising a ghost that lives in all of us: an ambivalence toward nature. As Berenice Murphy, a lecturer at Trinity College, suggests in her book , we might simply be subconsciously replaying the country鈥檚 founding, when Puritans encountered a wilderness that, before it was later rendered sublime and uplifting, was often a source of dread (see: ). 鈥淭he U.S. in the 21st century may be a predominately urban (and suburban) nation,鈥� she writes, 鈥渂ut something keeps drawing writers and filmmakers back to this point of initial contact, and to the cultural constructions that have sprung up around it.鈥�

She quotes the environmental historian William Cronon, in a passage I might borrow as the mantra of forest horror: 鈥淚n the wilderness the boundaries between human and nonhuman, between natural and supernatural, had always seemed less certain than elsewhere.鈥� The dualistic idea that wilderness can be both darkness and Eden lurks behind the sheer number of entrants in the genre; there are many more horror films set in the woods than in big cities. Maybe our urban fears are already too familiar, too human鈥攂ut who knows what lurks beyond the radius of a headlamp as you stare into the boreal depths?

With Halloween upon us, here, in no particular order, are some of my favorite forest horror movies, flicks that put the gore in Gore-Tex, that deliver Class V scares, that will have you draining your lantern batteries to stem the oncoming night.

The Evil Dead (1983)

鈥淲hy are we getting it so cheap?鈥� This fateful question is asked by one of a group of college students, en route to a Tennessee holiday rental, in director Sam Raimi鈥檚 celebrated low-budget shocker . The film is arguably the originator of the 鈥渃abin in the woods鈥� archetype. 鈥淵ou mean no one鈥檚 even seen the place?鈥� queries another. This kind of vacation insecurity helped launch Airbnb, but what do you do when your amenities include cellar trap doors that flap open for no reason and your superhost is an undead Sumerian? (Pro tip: When you see a poster for in the basement, run!) Originally called The Book of the Dead, the film got a standing ovation at Cannes but was initially deemed too intense to handle by U.S. distributors; a rave by Stephen King in the pages of Twilight Zone magazine鈥斺�渋t has the simple stupid power of a good campfire story鈥濃�攈elped to open doors.

Backcountry (2014)

, directed by Adam MacDonald, is based on the true story of an Ontario couple who was attacked by a predatory black bear in 2005 at their remote camp site in Missinaibi Lake Provincial Park As in many forest horror films, the dramatic arc is amped with a too-confident city dweller who has a merit badge in mansplaining. 鈥淚 know the park well,鈥� he says, turning down a ranger鈥檚 offer of a map, then chiding his girlfriend for bringing bear spray. (Also, a digital detox is nice and all, but bring your phone). Winningly, the film employs a real black bear in the shooting鈥攁 reportedly placid creature made, via editing and music, to come across as properly terrifying. One of the film鈥檚 scariest moments is seemingly more mundane: the couple climbs a crest, expecting to see a landmark, and instead just sees a vista of unending trees.

The Descent (2005)

In forest horror films, women are often depicted as unenthusiastic companions who鈥檇 rather be in some cushy hotel or encumbrances inevitably getting tripped up by a root as they flee some baddie. British director Neil Marshall鈥檚 The Descent was a welcome, -passing departure, focusing on a group of five female friends who routinely get together for some unadulterated Type 2 fun. Following the accidental death of the main character鈥檚 husband, the group reunites for a weekend of spelunking in the Appalachian Mountains. This is nature as restorative therapy, in theory, but clearly not all interpersonal issues have been resolved鈥攐ne reason the film succeeds is that this is no simple tale of nurturing sisterhood. Ratcheting things up is the claustrophobic, airless environs of the unmapped underground鈥攁ctually a soundstage in England, as real caves can be, er, dangerous, even when they aren鈥檛 the refuge of humanoids who have adapted to underground life.

The Ritual (2017)

Based on by novelist Adam Nevill, the British horror film , like The Descent, posits the wilderness as a place for potential healing. A group of friends are kicking around ideas their annual 鈥渓ad鈥檚 holiday鈥� when one is killed in a liquor store robbery. A year later, the survivors, to honor his memory, embark on a three-day hike on the Kungsleden, a 270-mile-long hiking trail in Northern Sweden. The guys aren鈥檛 particularly likable, they don鈥檛 seem like each other that much, and they鈥檙e not particularly outdoorsy鈥攖hink instead of . 鈥淔uck every hill in the world,鈥� one says, while climbing. It doesn鈥檛 take long to sense that it鈥檚 the inner demons that will torment as much as those lurking in the birch trees. Like most horror films, the buildup is better than the eventual reveal, but it鈥檚 a very good scramble for a while. (For a less supernatural hiking horror movie, see ).

Black Water (2007)

Australia is bigger than the continental U.S. but has less than one-tenth its population, with some 90 percent of the population living within 30 miles of its coastline. In other words, there鈥檚 a whole lot of wild. Not surprisingly, Australia has produced its fair share of 鈥淥utback horror,鈥� from the seminal to . One famous true story there spawned two separate horror films: in 2003, a group of teenage boys quad-biking near Darwin , one fatally. Both films it inspired, (directed by Wolf Creek鈥檚 Greg McLean) and , are worth seeing, but I preferred the lower-budget, lower-key Black Water, which sticks closer to the actual event, following a group of friends on a fishing outing. It gets at the beauty of the mangrove swamps鈥攁nd the threat contained within, with nary a trace of CGI in sight. One of my favorite moments comes when the group is assessing what useful items they鈥檙e carrying, and one unearths a loyalty card for a caf茅鈥攐ne of those humdrum tokens of our everyday lives, now rendered absolutely useless in this place outside civilization.

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Back when I was living in Brooklyn, New York, I would often see Jody Rosen on a bike.

I wouldn鈥檛 say we were the closest of friends鈥攚e went to college together, but now, as then, we moved in slightly different circles. Still, we鈥檇 often have a street corner stop and chat, trading the sort of shop-talk only of interest to two full-time Brooklyn journalists.

Rosen, typically clad in a newsboy cap, a bag strapped across his shoulder, and听astride a bright red cruiser bike鈥攔eplete with almost cartoonishly large off-white tires鈥攂ecame a talismanic presence for me on the neighborhood streets. I鈥檇 see him taking his son to school on the back of the bike, or coolly navigating the heavy traffic of Court Street at a pace somewhat below the usual frenetic velocity of New York City cyclists. When I didn鈥檛 see him, I often saw his bike chained to a parking meter outside a coffee shop or听leaning against the natural foods store window. Spotting it became a sort of game for my daughter and me. One day, she called out: 鈥淟ook, Jody鈥檚 seat is missing!鈥� (Alas, someone had pilfered the saddle.) Like most urbanites, my eyes were carefully attuned to the sidewalks, and seeing Jody鈥檚 bike was like ticking a square in some game of Gotham bingo.

In his new book, , Rosen, a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine, brings both his acuity as a pop-cultural critic and his genuine鈥攖hough never overweening or in-your-face鈥攑assion for the bicycle to bear in a freewheeling global journey. It begins in a church in a small town in England (where people claim to see, with almost religious conviction, a proto-bicycle in a stained-glass artwork that predates the device鈥檚 invention by centuries), and ends with Rosen trying to ride a fixie, less than successfully, in the onetime Kingdom of Bicycles, the city of Beijing.

As you might expect, Rosen has a lot to say about the joys, and travails, of urban riding. 鈥淏ike riding is the best way I know to reach an altered consciousness,鈥� he writes. 鈥淣ot an ennobled state, exactly, but definitely an enlivened one. A bike ride is far better than yoga, or wine, or weed.鈥� The bike is the 鈥渂est way to imbibe New York, to make sense of the pace, to gulp the town down.鈥� Off the bike, Rosen writes, New York becomes 鈥渓arger but less magnificent.鈥�

While Rosen鈥檚 lyrical odes听to city cycling do not lack conviction鈥攐r fail to find a complicit audience in me, despite the fact that I now live in New Jersey鈥攚hat makes Two Wheels Good a particularly fascinating read are his explorations into the rich and peculiar history of the bike, which recount at times the writer Greil Marcus鈥檚 foray into the 鈥渙ld, weird America.鈥� The bicycle seems to pop up everywhere and in the most unexpected places. Rosen tells, for instance, the story of a young, aspiring Yukon prospector who falls ill and misses the achievable window to get to the gold fields via dog sled team, so instead acquires a bike and rides for months in sub-zero conditions to beat his gold-rush competitors.

But it鈥檚 not always the story you expect. 鈥淭he popular literature on the bike is a highly sentimental and romantic literature,鈥� he told me, 鈥渨hich construes the bike as this kind of liberating emancipating device, the liberating green machine, the little 19th century machine that鈥檚 going to save the world.鈥� There鈥檚 something to that, of course, but Rosen says he was interested in a more 鈥渢ough love鈥� version of bicycle history, whether it鈥檚 the extractive industries used to produce it or its curious role in the Age of Empire.听鈥淭he bike reached many places in the world when it was ridden by soldiers, or prospectors, or missionaries, and that interests me,鈥� he says. One of the most egregious examples, he notes, is the connection of the late 19th century bicycle boom鈥攁ll those new rubber tires鈥攁nd the brutal colonization of countries like Brazil or the Belgian Congo. 鈥淚n Brazil, one person perished for every 150 kilograms of rubber reaped,鈥� he writes. In the Congo, 鈥渢he figure was one death for every ten kilograms of rubber.鈥�

Which is not to say the bike听is nefarious, or that it doesn鈥檛 historically figure, Rosen says, as a 鈥渕eans of resistance,鈥� or an 鈥渁gent of social change.鈥� After assuming power in 1933, Rosen notes, one of Hitler鈥檚 first acts was to crush the country鈥檚 cycling union (which had become associated with anti-Nazi parties). In 2016, the theocracy of Iran declared a fatwa on female cyclists (鈥淚t attracts the attention of male strangers and exposes society to corruption,鈥� the country鈥檚 supreme cleric declared). Iranian women, not without risk, have continued riding. 鈥淔or millions of women across the world,鈥� he writes, 鈥渂iking riding remains inherently political.鈥� People are always downplaying the bike, forgetting its power. Rosen quotes New York Times editor Harrison Salisbury in 1967 as he delivers testimony to the U.S. Senate on why the U.S. was encountering such headwinds in its war in Vietnam. 鈥淚 literally believe that without the bikes [the North Vietnamese Army] would have to get out of the war.鈥�

The bike, says Rosen, is ultimately a tool, whose inherent usefulness is not limited to any political party or social group.听鈥淭o me, the real signal moment of this was during the Black Lives Matter uprising in 2020 in New York City,鈥� he says. 鈥淵ou had a lot of people on bikes in the streets protesting, and they were met by the bicycle cops.鈥� And these were not听your normal shorts-clad bicycle cops pleasantly patrolling a pedestrian mall. 鈥淭hey were up-armored, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cops, who wear hockey goalie gear and use the bike as a shield and a battering ram,鈥� he says.

And when the bike is not being used to battle in the streets, it鈥檚 often at the center of a rhetorical fight. In recent years, he notes, it鈥檚 become a loaded symbol on the right, of a piece with arugula and lattes. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch even lambasted, Rosen notes, the inclusion of 鈥渂icycle repair shops鈥� in a list of businesses deemed essential during the pandemic. And sometimes, the bicycle can even seem just a twee lifestyle accessory, displayed in the windows of upmarket boutiques, parked in a rack (but seemingly rarely used) in front of luxury hotels.

But what Gorsuch clearly did not have on his mind was the fact that, as Rosen notes in the book, 鈥渁round the world, more people travel by bicycle than any other form of transportation.鈥� Sure, bike culture includes Instagram accounts with well-dressed people on beautiful bikes, hipsters on fixies, and Lycra,听but it also includes, in a city like New York, a massive fleet of working-class riders鈥攕ometimes called deliveristas鈥攚ho were, particularly during the pandemic, an essential factor in keeping the city functioning.

In less supple, more dogmatic hands, a book like Two Wheels Good might begin to coast a bit on its own self-congratulatory spin, but Rosen pulls off that most wonderful non-fiction trick: making the familiar strange. His narrative is a bit like his self-described cycling style: it鈥檚 not rushed, but it听deftly听maneuvers through crowded terrain, with impressionistic, cinematic glimpses of the world sliding by. One minute you鈥檙e learning about a 19th century Edison film called Trick Bicycle Riding鈥攑roduced by a roller-skate pioneer鈥攖he next you鈥檙e in Scotland, with ace trials rider Danny MacAskill, as Rosen (a self-professed 鈥渢urkey鈥� when it comes to raw cycling skill) tries, and fails, to keep up on what he terms a 鈥渂eginner鈥檚 level mountain bike trail.鈥� MacAskill, on the heels of Rosen鈥檚 wipeout, says: 鈥淚鈥檓 a wee bit worried that you鈥檙e going to kill yourself.鈥�

I can鈥檛 help asking Rosen about that old red bicycle I used to see on the street (which, it turns out, was a Felt 鈥淏ig Chief鈥�). He鈥檚 moved on a bit, stylistically, and is currently riding a bike from ; as a self-described 鈥渢errible鈥� mechanic, he lauds the low-maintenance belt drive. The Big Chief, however, remains in reserve in his condo鈥檚 basement storage area. And as it happens, I wasn鈥檛 the only one whose eyes were caught by that two-wheeled steed. Once, years ago, the bike was stolen while parked outside a caf茅. Rosen took to Twitter, essentially asking New Yorkers to keep watch. And, in fact, someone spotted the bike, fixed by a cheap combination lock to a pole in Union Square. Within hours, he was reunited with the Chief.

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I am sitting with Francis Mallmann, the famed Argentine chef, on the deck of his house, perched on La Isla, a nearly 15-acre island within a remote lake in Patagonia. Before us are a strip steak and thinly sliced potatoes, both cooked in clarified butter and just removed from an iron parrilla, or grill, gently smoking nearby. I鈥檝e offhandedly told him about a volume of essays and poems by Jorge Luis Borges, an even more fabled Argentine, that I鈥檇 recently bought at a bookshop in central Buenos Aires.

Mallmann, holding an almost comically bulbous glass of Chilean wine, brightens, and then asks: 鈥淒o you know the 鈥楾wo English Poems鈥� by Borges?鈥夆�� He reaches for his phone, searches for a moment, then begins reading. 鈥淲hat can I hold you with?鈥� one poem opens, followed by a catalog of declarations, such as: 鈥淚 offer you the loyalty of a man who has never been loyal.鈥�

It鈥檚 the sort of moment I鈥檝e come to regard as pura Mallmann, a heady, intoxicating foray into the empire of the senses. The scent of something sizzles away on a nearby plancha, or griddle; a soft tango plays in the background; people are gathered under a huge sky, with weather that seems to change on the half-hour; and the chef, with a broad, sympathetic face and flowing white hair, is declaiming some verse whose words, per Dylan, glow 鈥渓ike burning coal.鈥�

Mallmann鈥檚 story has already reached near-legend status, but in case you haven鈥檛 heard it: A poetically inclined, libertine chef from Argentina is cooking French cuisine at some of the top restaurants in the world, winning awards, when, at age 40, he has a midlife crise de foie and turns instead to a sort of gastro-anthropological passion project to bring traditional Argentinean cooking鈥攅verything from the hot-rock-lined curanto pits of the Indigenous Mapuche, to the metal-grates-over-hot-coals campfire cooking of the gauchos鈥攖o the wider culinary scene. At the time it was a head-scratching move, but one that worked out for him, resulting in nine restaurants around the globe, adored cookbooks, television shows in Argentina, and big-name fanboys, including David Beckham, Tim Ferriss, and the late Anthony Bourdain. Perhaps his most famous endeavor is a noted appearance, during which he barbecues meat via a staggering variety of outdoor pits, bonfires, and grills, and poignantly waxes by turns adamant and wistful about his many romantic loves. In the end, Mallmann鈥檚 name has become virtually synonymous with one word: fire.

The post Francis Mallmann Is the King of Outdoor Cooking. But He Still Has Work to Do. appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.